British Telecommunications Plc

British Telecommunications said it will buy MCI Communications Corp.'s 24.9% stake in Concert Communications, the companies' international phone services venture. The companies have not agreed on a price. The move follows WorldCom Inc.'s plan to pay $7 billion in cash for British Telecom's 20% stake in Washington-based MCI as part of WorldCom's planned $37-billion acquisition of the No. 2 U.S. long-distance company.

British Telecommunications' decision to accept $6.9 billion in cash from WorldCom Inc. for its holding in MCI Communications Corp. leaves it with a fat nest egg and a significant hole in its global ambitions, analysts said. BT's decision came after WorldCom raised its offer for MCI by 23% to $51 a share, or $41.43 billion with debt, easily topping both BT's and GTE Corp.'s competing bids. It also agreed to pay BT $6.9 billion in cash for its 18% MCI stake.

There may not be a profit soon in the big deal in which British Telecommunications and MCI teamed up last week to create a worldwide phone system in competition with American Telephone & Telegraph. Yet the British-American venture and the emerging battle to supply global phone and data services to multinational companies sends us a very loud message about the value of competition, private industry and antitrust law.

June 16, 1994 | MICHAEL SCHRAGE, Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes this column independently for The Times

Excuse me, is there an echo on this line? Barely a year ago, British Telecom announced that it would invest $5 billion to buy a 20% stake in MCI. Now Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom--Europe's largest state-run telecommunications monopolies--say they're prepared to ante up $4.2 billion for a comparable share of Sprint. (You remember Sprint--the No. 3 long-distance company that has apparently recovered well from having the merger hots for Electronic Data Services.) What's next?

AT&T Corp. will replace MCI Communications Corp. as British Telecommunications' partner in an international joint venture, giving both firms access to new customers, a report said Friday. The CNBC cable channel, citing sources close to the situation, said the possible multibillion-dollar deal could be announced this weekend. AT&T declined to discuss the reports. A British Telecom official in New York did not return a call seeking comment.